Art in an Octagon: The Schinkel Pavilion Berlin

The Schinkel Pavilon in Berlin-Mitte is perhaps Germany?s most unconventional art association. Where GDR nomenklatura once held cocktail parties, now Douglas Gordon, Cyprien Gaillard and Isa Genzken hold exhibitions. ... more

05/12/2008

From the Feuilletons

From the Feuilletons is a weekly overview of what's been happening in the German-language cultural pages and appears every Friday at 3 pm. CET.. Here a key to the German newspapers.

Frankfurter Rundschau 29.11.2008

The writers Tariq Ali and Suketu Mehtawrite about the attacks in Mumbai. Ali is sceptical about the immediate finger-pointing in Pakistan's direction. "What politician would say that a generation of young radicalised Muslims are growing up disenchanted with India's political system. Because it would mean having to admit that the system is in a very poor state of health." Mehta sums it up in a nutshell: "India's 150 million Muslims are poorer and more poorly educated than other Indians. The poverty rate among the urban Muslim population is 38 percent higher than in any other segment of the population, including the lower castes."

Die Welt 29.11.2008

In an essay in the literature section, historian Arno Lustiger has only the harshest of words for anti-Zionism and other forms of anti-Semitism and he warns about Arab anti-Semitism in particular, which gained acceptance at the UN conference on racism in Durban 2001. "Zionism was condemned as the contemporary form of Nazism and apartheid. The next conference is due to take place next April in Geneva and there will be an escalation of the scandal in Durban, where anti-racism degenerated into an ideology for totalitarian movements to use in their own interests... A number of states such as the USA, Canada and Israel will not be participating in the betrayal of human values - freedom of expression and religion among them - that is scheduled for Geneva. What will Germany's stance be? (Read Pascal Bruckner's call to "Boycott Durban 2")

Süddeutsche Zeitung 29.11.2008

When asked to imagine the world as a concert, composerKonrad Boehmer says he "hears a bourgeois salon concert. Biedermeier. Flowery wallpaper â Biedermeier," he tells Alexander Gorkow in an interview. And bankers and New Music composers are jointly to blame. "I am interested in the analogy between Avant-garde and capitalism. ... This analogy is all part of this great concert: a childish belief in pseudo-scientific nonsense, with mathematical underpinnings. Bankers and composers no longer understand themselves what they are peddling. Neo-Biedermeier is the answer. This neo-Prussian strutting in Berlin, the village opera with the Stadtschloss â this absurd palace will be the monument to our neo-Biedermeier." (The GDR Palace of the Republic in Berlin which was built on the site of the old Prussian Stadtschloss has now been completely torn down. It was announced on November 28 that the architect Franco Stella had won the competition to rebuild the facade of the old city palace with a modern interior. More here)

Die Tageszeitung 01.12.2008

Katrin Bettina Müller was at the premier of Jossi Wieler and Elfriede Jelinek's play "Rechnitz" in the Munich Kammerspielen. It is about the massacre of 180 Jews by guests at a party held by the Thyssen heiress Countess Margit Batthyany in 1945. (More here). "The chocolate gateaux. The guests sink their fingers into the cream with their bare hands, which moments before had plucked the best bits off the pizza, picked the meat off the roasted chicken and peeled eggs. Their slow motion gestures bespeak brutality and arrogance. The women stick their chocolatey fingers into their mouths and run them up their naked legs to their crotches, before wiping them clean on the shirts of their male companions. It is a celebration of obscenity and provocation. But the most obscene thing about it is that all the while they are talking about murder and people starving, but not in a tone of horror that refrains from judgement, but without any sense of wrongdoing whatsoever. It's like talking shop about the rules of hunting..."

Frankfurter Rundschau 02.12.2008

In conversation with Arno Widmann, political scientistHerfried Münklertalks about the geo-political state of the world. "If I am not mistaken about Russia's situation, then the country seems to be incapable of converting its oil money into a widespread economic-technological take off. What we are seeing is closer to the classic Third World syndrome: obscene wealth and excess on the one hand and poverty and misery in much of the rest of the country. Added to this is the situation in East Siberia. The Europeans who were sent there by the Czars or the Gulag regime are leaving. And they are being replaced by a dynamic Chinese populations. East Siberia is becoming Chinese. Russia is certainly still an important playerl but it's not in the same league as the USA, the EU or China.

Die Tageszeitung 05.12.2008

Who says the taz can't do glamour? Dorothea Hahn talks toJane Birkin about her new album and the conversation starts like this:"taz: Frau Birkin, you have been radiating freshness and innocence for more than four decades. How do you maintain your youthful aura?Jane Birkin: I don't think I look either fresh or innocent. More like an aging teenager. I never had the courage to have a face lift. My pride stopped me. But smiling is important. taz: Smiling is your secret?Birkin: It has the same effect as a face lift. A vague smile into the future. And only minimal make up. At 15 or 16 young girls look lovely with lots of makeup and lipstick. But I keep it to a strict minimum."

Neue Zürcher Zeitung 05.12.2008

"vk" reports on a conference in Berlin's Aspen Institute about bloggers in Iran: "The internet activists are calling for more support from abroad. But only on the condition that it is non-governmental, because otherwise the authorities could denounce them as spies. The Iranian activists are looking for help in training people to produce reliable news and content, in the techniques of internet usage and in thwarting the attempts of the establishment to curb them."

Saturday 11 - 17 December, 2010

A clutch of German newspapers launch an appeal against the criminalisation of Wikileaks. Vera Lengsfeld remembers GDR dissident Jürgen Fuchs and how he met death in his cell. All the papers were bowled over Xavier Beauvois' film "Of Gods and Men." The FR enjoys a joke but not a picnic at a staging of Stravinsky's "Rake's Progress" in Berlin. Gustav Seibt provides a lurid description of Napoleonic soap in the SZ. German-Turkish Dogan Akhanli author explains what it feels like to be Josef K. read more

Saturday 4 - Friday 10 December

Colombian writer Hector Abad defends Nobel Prize laureate Mario Vargas Llosa against European Latin-America romantics. Wikileaks dissident Daniel Domscheit-Berg criticises the new publication policy of his former employer. The Sprengel Museum has put on a show of child nudes by die Brücke artists. The SZ takes a walk through the Internet woods with FAZ prophet of doom Frank Schirrmacher. The FAZ is troubled by Christian Thielemann's unstable tempo in the Beethoven cycle. And the FR meets China Free Press publisher, Bao Pu.read more

Saturday 27 November - Friday 3 December

Danish author Frederik Stjernfelt explains how the Left got its culturist ideas. Slavenka Draculic writes about censoring Angelina Jolie who wanted to make a film in Bosnia. Daniel Cohn-Bendit talksÂ Â about his friendship, falling out and reconciliation with Jean-Luc Godard. Wikileaks has caused an embarrassed silence in the Arab world, where not even al-Jazeera reported on the what the sheiks really think. Alan Posener calls for the Hannah Arendt Institute in Dresden to be shut down.read more

Saturday 20 - Friday 26 November, 2010

The theatre event of the week came in a twin pack: Roland Schimmelpfennig's new play, a post-colonial "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" opened at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin and the Thalia in Hamburg. The anarchist pamphlet "The Coming Insurrection" has at last been translated into German and has ignited the revolutionary sympathies of at least two leading German broadsheets, the FAZ and the SZ. But the taz, Germany's left-wing daily, says the pamphlet is strongly right-wing. What's left and right anyway? came the reply.read more

Saturday 13 - Friday 19 November, 2010

Dieter Schlesak levels grave accusations against his former friend and colleague, Oskar Pastior, who spied on him for the Securitate. Banat-Swabian author and vice chairman of the Oskar Pastior Foundation, Ernest Wichner, turns on Schlesak for spreading malicious rumours. Die Zeit portrays the Berlin rapper Harris, and the moment he knew he was German. Dutch author Cees Nooteboom meditates on the near lust for physical torture in the paintings of Francisco de Zurburan. An exhibition in Mannheim displays the dream house photography of Julius Schulman.read more

Saturday 6 - Friday 12 November, 2010

The NZZ asks why banks invest in art. The FAZ gawps at the unnatural stack of stomach muscles in Michelangelo's drawings. The taz witnesses a giant step for the "Yugo palaver". Bernard-Henri Levy describes Sakineh Ashtiani's impending execution as a test for Iran and the west.Journalist Michael Anti talks about the healthy relationship between the net and the Chinese media. Literary academic Helmut Lethen describes how Ernst Jünger stripped the worker of all organic substances.read more

Saturday 30 October - Friday 5 November, 2010

Now that German TV has just beatifiedPope Pius XII, Rolf Hochmuth tells die Welt where he got the idea for his play "The Deputy". The FR celebrates Elfriede Jelinek's "brilliantly malicious" farce about the collapse of the Cologne City Archive. "Carlos" director Olivier Assayas makes it clear that the revolutionary subject is a figment of the imagination. The SZ returns from the Shanghai Expo with a cloying after-taste of sweet 'n' sour. And historian Wang Hui tells the NZZ that China's intellectuals have plenty of freedom to pose critical questions.read more

Saturday 23 - Friday 29 October, 2010

Author Doron Rabinovici protests against the concessions of moderate Austrian politicians to the FPÖ: recently in Vienna, children were sent back to Kosovo at gunpoint. Ian McEwan wonders why major German novelists didn't mention the Wall. The NZZ looks through the Priz Goncourt shortlist and finds plenty of writers with more bite than Houellebecq. The FAZ outs two of Germany's leading journalists who fiercely guarded the German Foreign Ministry's Nazi past. Jens-Martin Eriksen and Frederik Stjernfelt analyse the symptoms of culturalism, left and right. Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht demonstratively yawns at German debate.read more

Saturday 16 - Friday 22 October, 2010

A new book chronicles the revolt of revolting "third persons" at Suhrkamp publishers in the wild days of 1968. Necla Kelek is appalled by the speech of the very Christian Christian Wulff, the German president, in Turkey. The taz met a new faction of hardcore Palestinians who are fighting for separate sex hairdressing in Gaza. Sinologist Andreas Schlieker reports on the new Chinese willingness to restructure the heart. And the Cologne band Erdmöbel celebrate the famous halo around the frying pan.read more

Saturday 9 - Friday 15 October, 2010

The FR laps up the muscular male bodies and bellies at the Michelangelo exhibition in the Viennese Albertina. The same paper is outraged by the cowardice of the Berlin exhibition "Hitler and the Germans". Mario Vargas-Llosa remembers a bad line from Sweden. Theologist Friedrich Wilhelm Graf makes it very clear that Western values are not Judaeo-Christian values. The Achse des Guten is annoyed by the attempts of the mainstream media to dismiss Mario Vargas-Llosa. The NZZ celebrates the tireless self-demolition of Polish writer and satirist Slawomir Mrozek.read more

Saturday 2 - Friday 8 October, 2010

Nigerian writer Niyi Osundare explains why his country has become uninhabitable. German Book Prize winner Melinda Nadj Abonji says Switzerland only pretends to be liberal. German author Monika Maron is not surethat Islam really does belong to Germany. Russian writer Oleg Yuriev explains the disastrous effects of postmodernism on the Petersburg Hermitage. Argentinian author Martin Caparros describes how the Kirchners have co-opted the country's revolutionary history. And publisher Damian Tabarovsky explains why 2001 was such an explosively creative year for Argentina.read more

Saturday 25 September - Friday 1 October

Three East German theatre directors talk about the trauma of reunification. In the FAZ, Thilo Sarrazin denies accusations that his book propagates eugenics: "I am interested in the interplay of nature and nurture." Polemics are being drowned out by blaring lullabies, author Thea Dorn despairs. Author Iris Radisch is dismayed by the state of the German novel - too much idle chatter, not enough literary clout. Der Spiegel posts its interview with the German WikiLeaks spokesman, Daniel Schmitt. And Vaclav Havel's appeal to award the Nobel prize to Liu Xiabobo has the Chinese authorities pulling out their hair.read more

Saturday 18 - Friday 24 September, 2010

Herta Müller's response to the news that poet Oskar Pastior was a Securitate informant was one of overwhelming grief: "When he returned home from the gulag he was everybody's game." Theatre director Luk Perceval talks about the veiled depression in his theatre. Cartoonist Molly Norris has disappeared after receiving death threats for her "Everybody Draw Mohammed" campaign. The Berliner Zeitung approves of the mellowing in Pierre Boulez' music. And Chinese writer Liao Yiwu, allowed to leave China for the first time, explains why schnapps is his most important writing tool.read more

Saturday 10 - Friday 17 September, 2010

The poet Oskar Pastior was a Securitate informant, the historian Stefan Sienerth has discovered. Biologist Veronika Lipphardt dismisses Thilo Sarrazin'sincendiary intelligence theories as a load of codswallop. A number of prominent Muslim intellectuals in Germany have written an open letter to President Christian Wulff, calling for him to "make a stand for a democratic culture based on mutual respect." And a Shell study has revealed that Germany's youth aspire to be just like their parents.read more

Saturday 4 - Friday 10 September, 2010

Thilo Sarrazin has buckled under the stress of the past two weeks and resigned from the board of the Central Bank. His book, "Germany is abolishing itself", however, continues to keep Germany locked in a debate about education and immigration and intelligence. Also this week, Mohammed cartoonist Kurt Westergaard has been awarded the M100 prize for defending freedom of opinion. Chancellor Angela Merkel gave a speech at the award ceremony: "The secret of freedom is courage". The FAZ interviewed Westergaard, who expressed his disappointment that the only people who had shown him no support were those of his own class. read more